The appropriately named ‘Non Sit Peccatum’ (or ‘not a sin’ in Latin) was subjected to protests after shop owner Hector Valdivielso commissioned the images, which were displayed in the window.

As a result, he’s been (allegedly) threatened:

The shop owner took to Facebook to express his opinion, stating, “A man with his wife ordered me to remove the offending scene and said that if I didn’t he would remove it himself.”

Personally, I’m always wary when someone says they’ve been threatened but doesn’t have any more proof than their word. We’ve seen how this sort of accusation can turn out to be a hoax after the American election, where crybabies were falsely accusing others of hate crimes that didn’t take place.

The store owner did post a letter he says he received as a result of the dildo Nativity scene:

Valdivielso also posted an image of a hate letter he received, which read: “Don’t you have the balls to display something that would offend Muslims? Of course not, because they would blow you up.”

He has since taken the display down, and started asking people to vote online about whether the display should go back up, which smacks of a publicity campaign.

But I do have to admit that the story made me chuckle when I first read it, and I absolutely think he should be allowed to put up the display.

However, I can certainly understand when people make the argument that it’s in poor taste.

The suit alleges that the Latin cross “is the preeminent symbol of Christianity, representing the instrument of the crucifixion of Jesus.” So if the display is religious, the suit argues, it has no business on town property. The documents go on to say that every day, Tompkins “is forced to come into direct and unwelcome contact” with the cross on top of the tree as he drives through town. This, it says, has caused him “irreparable harm,” which can only be remedied by taking the cross down and paying Tompkins monetary damages.

The lawsuit also specifies that Tompkins doesn’t want his taxes helping light and maintain a religious display on town property.

First off, I think the claim that the cross was doing irreparable harm to the resident (Joseph Tompkins) is just ridiculous.

Yesterday I saw this story and watched a video where they made pretty much the same case against taking down the cross as the article does:

“There’s a church on every corner here,” said Mark. “There’s a church on every corner. Is he offended by all the crosses?”

This isn’t a good defense, unless you’re only talking about the ridiculous ‘irreparable harm’ part of the lawsuit.

Putting up religious imagery on private property is different than putting it up on public property using government funds.

With that being said, maybe I’m just getting soft in my old age, but I think it a shame that the cross was taken down. I understand that the resident is likely in the right legally, but I just don’t think this was a necessary move.

It might have something to do with the whining tone of ‘irreparable harm’ that has rubbed me the wrong way, which makes me less charitable towards the person filing the suit.

Then again, the town’s response is hardly better:

Memo to Knightstown: You could always have hundreds of crosses lit on private property across town. It’s not like this lawsuit changed your ability to light crosses and put them up on church property etc.

I don’t know. The passive aggressive nature of the response is a bit annoying as well.

So my opinion so far is that legally the resident was likely right, and the town made the right decision to take the cross down, rather than spend taxpayer money fighting a suit they’d likely lose.

However, I think the lawsuit was whiny, petty and not something that really needs to be fought, but like I said, maybe I’m just getting soft.

If it’s not the extreme Left, it’s the extreme Right trying to censor dissenting opinions. In this case it’s the Right deciding that a pretty inoffensive atheist billboard needs to be taken down…because feels.

A billboard promoting atheism during the holiday season has been run out of town by Christians in Monroe, Louisiana, who deemed it too offensive for their community’s religious sensibilities to tolerate.

Why do people want to ban different opinions?

Local news station KNOE reports that a billboard paid for by the American Atheists organization has been removed after multiple people in Monroe complained about being offended by it. The electronic billboard told people that they could “make Christmas great again” by skipping church this year, while also promoting the concept of an “Atheist Christmas.”

Get over yourselves. Just let the billboard stand, discuss it, explain why you disagree with it and let people decide for themselves which party has the better arguments. Stop trying to censor, drown out and get rid of any opinion that doesn’t match your own. It’s embarrassing when the Left does it and it’s just as shameful when the Right does it.

Just stop.

You’re like two sides of the same coin.

“I praise God that there was so much stirred up about it that it was taken down,” Monroe resident Shawn Cooper told KNOE.

Why would you praise God over this? Do you think getting it taken down is going to change someone’s mind? Do you think the discussion won’t happen if you just get this sign taken down? Do you think your God is so weak it can’t handle a billboard?

I think what you’re really afraid of is that people might agree with that sign. I think you’re worried that your arguments will have to stand on merit instead of being the only voice heard.

I do think Ali is harder to defend than Nawaz. I think an article in Raw Story sums it up well with this:

One Iran-based atheist who blogs under an assumed name, Kaveh Mousavi, for safety reasons, expressed how many former Muslims and reformers see Ali and Nawaz:

If only Ali was on this list, one could somehow squint and say they missed the point because of ignorance and lack of nuance. While I firmly believe she is a very important voice that shouldn’t be ignored, and while I think reading her quotes in context would show that when she used to say things like “there are no moderate Muslims” would show that ultimately her positions do not mean to paint all Muslims as bad (she has gotten much better at communicating nuance recently), I could be charitable and consider this an example of poor research.

Personally, I do not believe she belongs on this list and I will go step-by-step through the SPLC report and explain why. Let’s get started.

In her 2007 interview with The London Evening Standard, Hirsi Ali “advo­cated the closing of Islamic schools in the West and said that ‘violence is inherent in Islam,’” according to a later account in The New York Times.

While at first glance this may seem controversial, it’s not uncommon to see secularists advocate for the closure of faith based schools, especially those funded by tax dollars.

To argue that violence isn’t explicitly laid out in Islam is as absurd as saying Christianity has no violent verses. All you have to do is look at Sharia Law to see those violent verses put into action.

Saying that violence is inherent in Islam is not to say all Muslims are violent. The Left needs to stop conflating the criticism of a belief system with that of the individuals that practice that religion.

The report goes on:

In her 2007 Reason interview, she said, “There comes a moment when you crush your enemy” militarily, and added, “There is no moderate Islam. … [T]here’s really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There’s nothing moderate about it.” She also told the journal that she had sought to “get rid of” all Islamic schools in the Netherlands while living there.

We’ve already covered the school bit.

I read this interview and I have to say I disagree with about 60% of what she says in it. I think the interviewer did a great job asking follow up questions.

There was certainly an illiberal aspect to it all. But again, context is everything. If you’ve read Infidel, you know that, in her native Somalia, Hirsi Ali was the victim of forced genital mutilation when she was five and was later almost married off to a distant cousin she despised. Those experiences equipped her with a rare determination to combat the deeply misogynistic “death cult” (her term) that is Islam, something she has done in an admirable way with the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation, an organization that helps free women and girls from cultural and religious oppression. (If that isn’t Social Justice, I don’t know what is.)

He also says:

One more thing: What do you think would have happened if Ayaan Hirsi Ali had been a harsh and implacable critic of Christianity, rather than Islam? My guess is that hardly anyone at Brandeis would’ve batted an eyelash. I’m not exactly a fan of Christianity myself, but if you’re going to shrug over unkind invective against one religion, why draw the line at another? If anything, Islam, overwhelmingly stuck in the dark Middle Ages with a mentality hostile to the Enlightenment, deserves a much more vigorous response from secular humanists and atheists than Christianity does. And that’s precisely where Hirsi Ali has directed her barbs.

I think that accurately describes the double standard at work here and elsewhere in the media. Christianity is safe to criticize because it’s politically correct, but it isn’t if it’s Islam.

The report says:

In a July 11, 2009, essay for the online World Post, Hirsi Ali criticized President Obama for denouncing “Islamic extremism without once asso­ciating Islam with extremism.” She threw cold water on the idea of the U.S cooperating with Muslims in order to battle jihadist extremism.

There are a number of writers and critics who have criticized Obama for the exact same thing.

Hillary Clinton was asked about the terminology on CNN’s “New Day” Monday and made clear she would use the words “radical Islam,” but she added an important qualifier.

“From my perspective, it matters what we do more than what we say,” she said. “And it mattered we got bin Laden, not what name we called him. I have clearly said we — whether you call it radical jihadism or radical Islamism, I’m happy to say either. I think they mean the same thing.”

Disagreeing with Obama’s decision not to use the phrase hardly makes one an extremist. You can make the case either way, and if anything, she is helping to facilitate that conversation – something we desperately need to do in the West. We need to take an honest look at what religions teach and have that conversation, and that includes Islam.

In an Aug. 18, 2010, Wall Street Journal op-ed, “How to Win the Clash of Civilizations,” Hirsi Ali said that Islam “is at war with America” and wrote that Western civilization “needs to be actively defended” against Islam.

I read the op-ed and she isn’t specifically talking about Islam. She’s talking about civilizations and cultures that clash with the West. Here’s an example from the piece:

The balance of power among these civilizations, he argued, is shifting. The West is declining in relative power, Islam is exploding demographically, and Asian civilizations—especially China—are economically ascendant. Huntington also said that a civilization-based world order is emerging in which states that share cultural affinities will cooperate with each other and group themselves around the leading states of their civilization.

The West’s universalist pretensions are increasingly bringing it into conflict with the other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China. Thus the survival of the West depends on Americans, Europeans and other Westerners reaffirming their shared civilization as unique—and uniting to defend it against challenges from non-Western civilizations.

Again, this is an opinion and not extremist at all. It’s a conversation starter. If you actually read the op-ed, you’ll quickly see its inclusion as ‘proof’ of Ali’s extremism is patently absurd.

From the field guide:

Appearing on the March 23, 2015, edition of “The Daily Show,” she said, “If you look at 70% of the violence in the world today, Muslims are responsible.” Experts said the claim appeared to be bogus, and she later amended it to say 70% of fatalities “were in wars involving Muslims,” including civil wars.

The largest increase was in the Middle East, where the internal conflicts that resulted from the societal upheavals associated with the Arab Spring intensified. The Syrian civil war took some 80,000 lives, compared with some 49,000 in 2013. The rise to prominence of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) was a significant reason for the increased death toll in Iraq, which more than doubled from around 8,000 to nearly 20,000. Following the failure of the post-revolutionary Libyan state, fatalities there climbed sharply as regional and Islamist militias vied for power.

And:

African conflicts also contributed to the rise in fatality figures. In 2014, violence in South Sudan, Nigeria and the Central African Republic (CAR) reached new heights. Between 7,000 and 10,000 lives were lost because of the brutal Islamist insurgency in Nigeria. In the CAR more than 5,000 people were killed in sectarian violence between the predominantly Muslim Séléka rebels and the Christian and animist anti-Balaka militia.

Her amended statement would seem to be close to the mark. And if the stat is wrong, that hardly means she’s saying all Muslims should be hated. People screw up stats all the time. Nothing in that quote says ‘do violence and hate Muslims’.

The link provided by the SPLC isn’t the entire interview either. You’d think if you’re going to use something to smear someone as a hater, you’d at least provide a link to the entire interview.

In conclusion, I’d like to state for the record that while I don’t agree with everything Ali says, I do not think she belongs on a list of extremists. I think it’s irresponsible of the SPLC to put her on that list, and I think they likely did so because they’re attempting to be politically correct. I think Ali’s voice is an important one, especially since she has first-hand experience with Islam.

That doesn’t mean that people can’t disagree with her stances and if they do, I very much think they should speak up. We need to have a platform where someone like Ali can voice her opinions and others who think she’s incorrect can say, ‘No, here are the facts and this is why I think you’re wrong’. Branding her as an extremist does not facilitate this sort of conversation and only damages it.

I also find her treatment to be a gross double standard. People like Hitchens and Dawkins have made far more controversial statements about Christianity and they will likely never appear on a list of anti-Christian extremists.

I agree with the Friendly Atheist when he says: “The SPLC is making the mistake of equating fair criticism of Islam with unfair bigotry against Muslims. No one has to agree with what Hirsi Ali and Nawaz say about Islam, but it’s absurd to claim that they hate Muslims to the point of being extremists.”

I’d like to leave you with this video from The Thinking Atheist that sums up my thoughts on this whole thing rather well.

Even the name of the report is absurd – a ‘field guide’ sounds like we’re talking about a trail guide or hunting manual, instead of people who are supposedly dangerous extremists.

That aside, I’ve gone through the entire report and I believe it needs to be vehemently opposed. Not only does it attempt to slur the character of two moderate critics, but it does so with very little evidence.

In my opinion, this ‘field guide’ is the latest failure of the regressive, authoritarian Left to come to grips with reality, and demonstrates their seemingly inexhaustible ability to bend over backwards in defense of the indefensible.

Instead of denouncing the very real oppression of women, LGBT, moderate Muslims and minority religions in theocratic Islamic countries, they have instead decided to denounce those who are actively trying to criticize and modernize the religion that is at least in part responsible for their oppression.

In case you think I’m overreacting, I’m going to go through some of what this guide says about both Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and explain why I think they have been wrongfully maligned.

In this post I will talk about Maajid and in another post I will do the same for Ayaan.

The Claims Made Against Maajid Nawaz

I’m going to start with Maajid because of the two, I think he took the harshest blow.

The report said:

In the list sent to a top British security official in 2010, headlined “Preventing Terrorism: Where Next for Britain?” Quilliam wrote, “The ideology of non-violent Islamists is broadly the same as that of violent Islamists; they disagree only on tactics.” An official with Scotland Yard’s Muslim Contact Unit told The Guardian that “[t]he list demonises a whole range of groups that in my experience have made valuable contributions to counter-terrorism.”

This isn’t even very controversial. Here’s the definition of Islamism: “Islamism, also known as Political Islam (Arabic: إسلام سياسي‎‎ islām siyāsī), is an Islamic revival movement often characterized by moral conservatism, and the attempt to implement Islamic values in all spheres of life.”

Within that movement, there are people who don’t believe in violence in order to achieve their political aims, and there are those who do. To deny this would be to deny reality, and to use this to call someone an extremist is just absurd.

The statement quoted from Quilliam is not controversial and completely true.

Moving on to the next point made against Nawaz:

In a Nov. 16, 2013, op-ed in the Daily Mail, Nawaz called for criminalizing the wearing of the veil, or niqab, in many public places, saying: “It is not only reasonable, but our duty to insist individuals remove the veil when they enter identity-sensitive environments such as banks, airports, courts and schools.”

Here’s what he actually said, from the link provided by the SPLC:

It is not only reasonable, but our duty to insist individuals remove the veil when they enter identity-sensitive environments such as banks, airports, courts and schools. Legally speaking, there is no basis for any exception to be made, but the sad fact is exceptions are being made because we have become too spineless to do anything about it.

Let me make this clear: it is our duty to adopt a policy barring the wearing of niqabs in these public buildings. Here’s my test: where a balaclava, motorcycle helmet or face mask would be deemed inappropriate, so should a niqab. It’s simple really.

In other words, he wants to hold people to an equal standard, no matter what head gear they’re wearing. I hardly find this to be controversial, although I can understand why some people might disagree with this stance.

But to call it an extreme view is just crazy. It’s not extreme and in no way should qualify someone as an extremist.

According to a Jan. 24, 2014, report in The Guardian, Nawaz tweeted out a cartoon of Jesus and Muhammad — despite the fact that many Muslims see it as blasphemous to draw Muhammad. He said that he wanted “to carve out a space to be heard without constantly fearing the blasphemy charge.”

Here’s the tweet in question.

First off, it shouldn’t matter who finds it offensive. It’s irrelevant, really. We have freedom of speech and while some people may be offended by such a tweet, that in no way means they can or should be able to silence people from making them.

Second, this tweet is so very benign. Worse tweets are sent every day satirizing Christianity and no one gets put on a list (rightfully so I might add) of Anti-Christian extremists as a result. In fact, I’d be willing to bet some people who have applauded the decision to put Nawaz on a list of extremists have done similar things towards other religions without batting an eye.

Last but not least, we have this gem, which I consider to be the most ridiculous of them all:

Nawaz, who had described himself as a “feminist,” was “filmed repeatedly trying to touch a naked lap dancer,” according to an April 10, 2015, report in the Daily Mail. The paper apparently got the security film from the owner of a strip club who was incensed by Nawaz’s claims to be a religious Muslim.

So he broke some sort of feminist law and that makes him an anti-Muslim extremist? The two don’t even have anything to do with one another, and is clearly just an attempt to smear Nawaz’s character.

The lap dance they are talking about was during his bachelor party.

How extremist of him! I mean no one goes to a strip bar for their bachelor/bachelorette party. The man is clearly a monster and must be stopped.

In his Facebook post, he said: “In current times, our moral uproar is best reserved for those who aspire to stone men or women to death, not those who consensually watch women, or men for that matter, dance. In fact, please be prepared to see me again around London some time, you may even catch me dancing.”

Sounds reasonable to me.

If getting a lap-dance is something you find objectionable, that’s your opinion. However, it’s perfectly legal and it’s unethical to use as justification to label the man an anti-Muslim extremist.

Maajid Nawaz literally argued in a debate that Islam is a religion of peace. To frame him as a hater of Muslims is irresponsible and reprehensible.

Jesus. I read this story and was flabbergasted by the raw stupidity of it.

In Chicago, they were planning on creating a haunted house that would feature scenes from real life massacres – including the shooting at the gay Orlando nightclub, Pulse – and botched abortions:

A Christian haunted house intended to take place in an elementary school has been shut down amid outcry that it planned to recreate real-life massacres for entertainment, including the shooting at the gay Orlando nightclub, Pulse.

And:

Other scenes the house supposedly planned to feature included a botched abortion and the 2015 shooting at a Charleston, South Carolina, church that left nine people dead.

Here’s the advertisement for the haunted house.

The house would also focus on moral choices:

“It’s time to face the consequences of your actions….” the ad read. “The choice is life or death; sin or salvation; heaven or hell. The scenes will be action-packed, real and jaw dropping.”

“Whose moral choices are we talking about?” Nat asked. “Is it immoral to just want to go out and be with your friends and dance? And what really bothered me was that this was in a public school supported by our tax dollars.”

Maybe they missed the class on ethics where they explained that subjecting children to this sort of nonsense, and using tax payer dollars to do so is unethical.

How can you possibly know right from wrong when you’re pushing for a haunted house that will subject children to real life massacres masquerading as entertainment?

I mean, Jesus freaking Christ, you evil assholes. How did you ever think this was a good idea? This is one of the scummiest things I’ve read this year, and to think it was going to happen in an Elementary school just blows my fucking mind.

The idiot who was responsible for the haunted house had this to say:

In a later tweet, Tappler, who identifies himself as a licensed minister in an online bio, responded to criticism by calling himself a “trailblazer.”

That’s not ‘trailblazing’. That’s stupid beyond measure, and damaging to children. It’s just so ironic that someone planning to do this thinks they have such a lock on ethics that they should teach it to children.

Everything about this story, except for the fact it was thankfully shut down, just reeks of poor decision making, potentially horrific consequences, moral bankruptcy and undeniable stupidity.

Doctor-assisted death will be restricted to mentally competent adults who have serious and incurable illness, disease or disability under new legislation tabled in Parliament today.

The long-awaited bill also sets out safeguards to protect vulnerable Canadians, but does not include some of the most contentious recommendations from a parliamentary committee, including extending the right to die to “mature minors” and the mentally ill, and allowing advance consent for patients with degenerative disorders.

Instead, the bill limits access to those “suffering intolerably” and whose death is “reasonably foreseeable.”

Personally, I don’t think the bill goes far enough but I agree with its implementation and the Supreme Court of Canada also agrees.

Of course, the religious have vehemently disagreed with the bill and I would never dream of trying to force them to have a doctor assist them in taking their own life, but some of them have no problem trying to force me to live through torturous, incurable pain.

Like the blogger I mentioned earlier:

Canada recently passed a bill legalizing what they term as “medical aid in dying”, whose proper acronym, fittingly, is “MAD”. Countless religious leaders of all persuasions spoke out against this so-called medical procedure as the bill worked its way through the Canadian Parliament and then the Senate, but the majority of Canadians supported the bill and now support the law. In other words, the majority of Canadians consider that getting someone to help you kill yourself is not only a darn good idea but a “right” that should be protected by law.

However, to be clear, I think that they have a right to do that. I think it’s unethical of them. I think they’re being unreasonably cruel by depriving the family of the service, but they’re also within their rights to be callous and stupid.

The majority of Canadians support the law because it makes sense and people don’t want to go days, weeks, months or even years dying in excruciating pain.

Let’s see what else this blogger has to say:

Only a few years ago, before the bill was tabled in the House of Parliament, people who indicated they were suicidal were still considered mentally ill in Canada and in urgent need of mental health intervention. If they persisted in voicing their suicidal intentions or even attempted suicide, they were usually taken into protective custody. Suicidal thoughts were considered – by law, by the medical community, and by the general public – an aberration and a clear sign of severe illness.

Please read what this bill means in my very first quote. People can’t just decide willy-nilly to take their own life. There are very real guidelines that must be followed.

No person of sound mind wants to kill him or herself. In my opinion, the desire to commit suicide has and remains an expression of an unhinged mind, regardless of the circumstances (i.e., terminal illness) or legal pronouncements.

Fuck me. I didn’t know you were a doctor or a psychiatrist.

We are talking about people who have an incurable disease, illness or disability. They will have to be judged as mentally competent adults by an actual professional, and they have to be suffering intolerably.

Denying them the right to say, ‘enough is enough’, is the cruel option, and we all know how religion often takes the cruelest, most despicable course of action.

However – and this is an argument that was never raised during the debates on MAD – killing yourself does not stop the pain. Death by your own hand is not a way out of a painful life. I know this to be an absolute fact, as do others who have approached death’s door and, for one reason or another, retreated. And yet, this absolute fact was never tabled as evidence against MAD during any of the debates or discussions prior to MAD becoming law. Instead, MAD was framed as a way out of suffering rather than a passageway to endless suffering, which is what it is.

You know this to be an absolute fact how?

It was never tabled as evidence because there is no evidence for such a thing. Your personal experience is anecdotal in nature. Your beliefs are not held by everyone and your religion does not rule our laws. If you want to go out bawling in absolute pain because you believe Jesus would want that, then you go ahead. Leave the rest of us out of your mythical house of pain.

We don’t want to suffer, we don’t want our loved ones to suffer, and MAD seems to offer a way to prevent suffering.

You are arguing that they (your loved ones etc) should be made to endure as much suffering as it takes before they draw their last breath.

Yet you don’t want them to suffer?

What is this double-speak?

Canada was once considered a Christian nation, but it is no more. For most Canadians, this dissociation with all things Christian is “progress”, whereas the truth is that turning away from God is the very opposite of progress.

We are not ruled by your particular religious ideology. Thankfully.

People who want to kill themselves need help to get to a state of mind where they no longer want to kill themselves, but in post-Christian Canada, they’re now given a doctor’s appointment and a two-week waiting period, and then they’re given a needle.

They were in their ‘right state of mind’ as judged by a medical professional before making the choice to end their life.

It is their life. Not yours. Not Jesus’. Not God(s).

Theirs.

Sadly, I believe that, like all other post-Christian nations in the world, Canada has reached the point of no return. It’s too late for collective repentance; all that can be salvaged is a few individuals who still hold to God’s laws and follow Jesus.

Given the alternative, you’d be wise to count yourself among those few.

Yes. We will have to keep on being prosperous, rich and happy as a society. Some of us will have the choice to end our lives before we have to inhumanely suffer days of physical torture, and we will be able to let our families and loved ones remember us as we were before the illness took hold. For some of us, we will be given the same ‘right’ that we grant our loved pets when we see that they are needlessly going through intolerable pain and have no quality of life.